1. The Cover-up. Many people within Chavez’s organization and inner circle knew of his crimes, as did, obviously, his victims. They made the very difficult utilitarian decision to protect a serial rapist and child predator to advance Chavez’s humanitarian cause. I hold that was, in fact, a defensible position. This was ethics zugzwang. Cognitive dissonance applies powerfully when flawed individuals are the faces of a social cause, and discrediting of that face or faces can mean allowing a greater wrong to continue by exposing a wrong that is not quite as significant or powerful.
One can also call this reasoning, also legitimately, a rationalization: The Saint’s Excuse, #13 on the list. He’s doing such a good thing and so much is at stake…we have to protect him despite the fact that our hero a) cheats on his wife, or b) beat his previous wife, or c) strangled his dog in a rage, or d) killed someone while driving drunk as a juvenile, or e) drugs women who come to him as a mentor and has sex with them, or, f) left a woman he was with at a drunken party to die in a submerged car, or g) keeps sex slaves in a hidden room in his cellar or, h) kills them and eats them with a Satanic cult, or i) is secretly a spy for China. Where do you finally say, like Jack Point in “The Yeomen of the Guard,” “I can’t let THAT pass!”?
Surely there is a line that has to be drawn somewhere.
2. The Hypocrisy Problem. The Left, which has been desperately trying to link President Trump to the Jeffrey Epstein crimes with another outburst just yesterday, is again in a “hoisted by their own petard” fix. They have been trying to denigrate the Founders, particularly Thomas Jefferson, toppling their statues and stripping their names from buildings, schools and streets, based on many of our icons engaging in practices that their own culture had not yet determined to bee wrongful—presentism, in short. Chavez didn’t have that excuse. If he isn’t cancelled, then the Left’s double standards, which are already unconscionable, become too blatant to deny.
And so it was that within hours of the Times story’s publication, communities and institutions began preparing to remove Cesar Chavez’s name from dozens of parks, libraries, schools and streets. The State of Texas will not be observing Cesar Chavez Day on March 31, and will be removing it from state law, Gov. Greg Abbott said yesterday. California Assemblywoman Alexandra M. Macedo (R-Tulare) introduced legislation to rename the March 31 California State holiday to Farmworker Day. (They should call the holiday “Illegal Alien Day” and get on with it.) At Fresno State University, the Cesar Chavez statue on campus since 1996 has been covered with a tarp and will soon be taken down.
How much of this is genuine ethics balancing under difficult circumstances, and how much of it is virtue-signaling and grandstanding?
3. The duty to honor founders. I feel very strongly about this. Organizations and institutions that only or primarily exist because of one individual must not erase that individual from their histories or refuse to acknowledge his or her contributions to them no matter how unethical or even illegal their personal, yes, and even their professional conduct had been.
The ethical issue is the same as that facing children whose parents have been revealed as miscreants to some degree. There is at least a minimal obligation to acknowledge one’s debt arising from the fact of existence. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America was begun by, among others, super-lawyer and litigation innovator Melvin Belli. His name is nowhere to be found on the organization’s website or in its headquarters, because Mel (whom I knew bit) embarrassed ATLA by flagrant, high profile and unethical solicitation of clients. The Boston Red Sox, now a beloved institution in the city, would not still be in Boston and Fenway Park would be a parking garage were it not for the civic dedication of longtime owner Tom Yawkey. But the team’s current woke owners stripped Yawkey’s name from one of the streets around the park because he was an old-school southerner slow to accept the need for black players to play in the Major Leagues.
If the farm workers want an example of how organizations should continue to separate the founder’s personal flaws from his contributions to society, they need look no further than the NAACP and their continuing deification of Martin Luther King despite the uncomfortable evidence that he was no better a human being than Casar Chavez. I would be more effusive about the NAACP and their allies’ continued loyalty to King if their resolution of their ethical conflict wasn’t denial.
Ethics Alarms 
“The Association of Trial Lawyers of America was begun by, among others, super-lawyer and litigation innovator Melvin Belli. His name is nowhere to be found on the organization’s website or in its headquarters, because Mel (whom I knew bit) embarrassed ATLA by flagrant, high profile and unethical solicitation of clients.”
The real crime was his role as the Friendly Angel in that execrable Star Trek episode “And the Children Shall Lead”.
On a more serious note (because I’m afraid the children’s chant will become an earworm if I think on it too long), this strikes me as somewhat convenient. I think that there are problematic people on the Left’s list that they just want a good reason to dump and wait for a serendipitous moment to do it. The Left probably knew about Chavez for years but couldn’t risk alienating the Latino community, the Farmworkers and DEI activists. However, the Highest Tier Progressive causes include Illegal Immigrants and Chavez was notoriously critical of them. These revelations have simply given them the opportunity to throw him under the bus because they are shocked…shocked!.. that such an important figure has been accused of rape.
The Left doesn’t care about sexual misconduct if it involves one of their own. They’ll toss a sacrificial lamb like Al Franken on the altar of righteous indignation every so often, but they are jettisoning Chavez because he didn’t promote their narrative. He’s a victim of presentism, too. The scoundrel.
“The Left probably knew about Chavez for years but couldn’t risk alienating the Latino community, the Farmworkers and DEI activists.”
If you want to see or hear the most ardent anti-illegal immigrant sentiments, talk to Latinos who slogged through the arcane, Byzantine immigration rules to obtain legal status, permanent residency, and later citizenship. They also think that the Cesar Chavezes of the world are grifters and ne’er-do-wells. They are not so loving toward the narrattive that “good and hard-working” people are simply crossing the border in search of better lives. They know that the farm workers Chavez so cirminally loved and adored have guest worker status, work legally during the spring planting and fall harvest times, go back to the home countries, and are pretty decent people. Many will also tell you that they are not, in any way, shape, or form, like the uneducated hordes of people flooding the border, paying coyotes to cross illegally and demanding rights and privileges they are neither entitled to or warrant receiving. Many are highly educated, professionals, and come here to pursue the American Dream.
jvb
I already see gloating reactions from the not-so-left, e.g. about left wing icon and “civil rights martyr” George Floyd:
Not St. George of the Floyd. Please say it ain’t so.
jvb
A girlfriend who volunteered to work with Cesar Chavez back in the day said he was well known for putting the moves on the women around him. I recall that he made advances toward her or at least sounded her out. (However, she never used the word “rape” in connection with Chavez.) My friend saw through Chavez and stopped doing volunteer work for him. It was too bad because as native Californians, we were very much in favor of Chavez’s efforts on behalf of farm workers. Alas, he was a highly esteemed guy and like all powerful men, exuded a certain charismatic attraction. He obviously took advantage of those who were too starry eyed and susceptible to his incredible charm.
“They made the very difficult utilitarian decision to protect a serial rapist and child predator to advance Chavez’s humanitarian cause. I hold that was, in fact, a defensible position. This was ethics zugzwang.”
So, if the cause is righteous, then covering up the leader’s bad, criminal behavior is justifiable. I guess we should cover up Bill Cosby’s felonious ways because he was a TV icon. Or, we should ignor any number of clergy members of various religious orders’ abhorrent behaviors toward their congregants because saving innumeral souls outweighs the damage done to members of the flock(s). Or, Black Lives Matter should not have to address its “leaders'” corruption and embezzlement of millions of dollars of organization funds for their own benefits (lovely homes, cars, watches, purses, spa treatments, etc.) because police brutality against blacks is more important that the organization’s fiscal and corporate integrity.
To me, the movement can survive the ousting of the supposed figurehead. In fact, throwing a Cesar Chavez out of the organization because he is credibly accused of reprehensible actions and crimes would make the organization stronger, sending a message that the organization would not, under any circumstances, tolerate that behavior, especially from the leader.
jvb
Sure it can…now. But if King had been outed as a rapist in 1962, it would have set the Civil Rights movement back a decade or more.
Does that mean that giving the saint a pass can be ethically defended on grounds of ethics zugzwang and ethics conflict?
There are always exceptions to every rule and every rationalization.
Cesar Chavez may have been given the saints pass, however the saints pass only applies as long as the saint is still considered a saint. The problem is that Cesar Chavez has always been vehemently opposed to illegal immigration, calling illegal immigrants wetbacks. Illegal immigration has been used in California to undercut the wages of legal agricultural labor. This makes Cesar Chavez politically uncomfortable to the current left, and it becomes convenient to throw him under the bus.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/03/19/nolte-why-cesar-chavez-suddenly-became-politically-inconvenient-to-the-left/
That is an interesting and relevant point. I also remembered that Chavez was very opposed to illegals coming in and working at lower wages and undermining his efforts to in increase wages, get rights.
I recently ordered Gandhi’s autobiography thinking him a “genuine saintable man”. I came across this woman and her work pointing out that it was not quite like people think.
https://youtu.be/4-yMiBGBOe0?si=jQlvRlLU8HvsEtSZ
:::sigh:::
Boys will be boys I have often say.
Ironic that I’m reading Baldwin’s “Go Tell it on the Mountain” right now.
No man worth his salt abides by this.
Ironic that a single mother used to live next to us gave her boy that pass, while we marched our son over to apologize (they were 8 and 7, respectively, and I forget the offense perpetrated on the neighbor girl – disrespect of some sort…).
That excuse angers me greatly….
No man worth his salt abides by this.
Thank Heaven …
In Venezuela sexual misconduct by family men is not only the norm but is a source of pride. Children on the schoolyard, even girls, will boast of how many “amantes” o “queridas” their own father has, even though it is really against their own interests. (This was not the case in my Orthodox community — too close knit together for such misconduct. But there was still other forms of sexual misconduct and molesting …
You have to examine evolutionary biology to understand the motives. In this sense “boys will be boys” explains the imperative that, in Chavez, motivated him.
I think Chavez was the only one left alone in the Trump admin’s move to re-name the Biden-era “DEI” ships (Harvey Milk, Ruth Ginsberg, etc.). Guess Chavez will also have to go now. I wonder if they have plans for the named but not yet built, USS William J. Clinton Carrier, also a Biden (or his handlers) designation?
A cultural or anthropological crock of shite how ever you wish to slice it….
Making excuses for poor behavior needs to stop.
In the case of these icons of movements, the behavior was likely known before the movements gained momentum, but no one had the balls to step up and get somebody new. Was that possible? Would the movements have gained the success they eventually did without Chavez or King? We’ll never know, but saying no definitively relies on what already happened.
I get that everything goes from a movement to a business to a racket, but it’s because at points on that journey people are crap; imagining it won’t be that way is to think the song of the same name as useful guidance.
That said, in the case of King, did it really do that much good, considering the state of inner city blacks?
Lots of crappy people making crappy decisions all along the way, on every side, to get to where we are today, some of them based on “ethical” decisions.
Better to do right because it’s right; otherwise it’s just an enormous, glorified “the ends justify the means” argument.